Contributing Institution: UCLA Library Special Collections

Title: Wanda Coleman papers

Creator: Coleman, Wanda

Identifier/Call Number: LSC.2282

Physical Description: 75.2 linear feet (182 boxes, 2 record cartons, and 1 flat box)

Physical Description: 56 linear feet (44 unprocessed record cartons, 4 unprocessed flat boxes, 1 unprocessed oversize record carton, 2 unprocessed oversize boxes, 1 unprocessed document box)

Physical Description: 168 audiovisual carriers (157 audiocassettes, 6 videocassettes, 5 records)

Physical Description: 101 born-digital carriers (69 optical discs, 32 floppy disks)

Date (inclusive): 1960-2013

Abstract: Wanda Coleman was born on November 13, 1946 and grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. Coleman's poetry is widely anthologized and published, and her poetry collection Bathwater Wine received the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. In addition to her poetic career, Coleman was also successful across genres. She had a well-known column in the Los Angeles Times and won an Emmy for her writing on Days of Our Lives. The collection contains work produced by Coleman between 1960 and 2013, including manuscripts and drafts of her published poetry and prose, journalism, writing for film and television, and spoken word recordings, as well as many unpublished writings. In addition, there is a wealth of correspondence with major literary figures and institutions, activist materials, and ephemera relating to Coleman's professional and personal life.

Physical Location: Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Language of Material: Materials are primarily in English, some materials in Dutch and Italian.

Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Originals in box 184 not available for consultation due to poor physical condition, use digitized versions only.

CONTAINS UNPROCESSED DIGITAL/AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS: Digital/audiovisual materials are not currently available for access and will require further processing and assessment. If you have questions about this material please email AskLSC@library.ucla.edu.

Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

Purchased from Austin Straus, 2015.

UCLA Catalog Record ID: 9980033763606533 

[Identification of item], Wanda Coleman papers (Collection 2282). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Processed by Kim Calder under the supervision of Jillian Cuellar and Courtney Dean in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT), 2015-2016. 

Mold remediation was performed on Box 185.

Damaged material in Box 184 was digitized for preservation purposes.

Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.

We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating existing description of our materials that contains language that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they could be described more accurately, by filling out the form located on our website: Report Problematic Content and Description in UCLA's Library Collections and Archives. 

Wanda Coleman was born on November 13, 1946 in Watts and raised in South Central Los Angeles. When she was eighteen, she married her first husband, Jerry Coleman, with whom she had two children, Anthony and Luanda Tunisia. Coleman retained custody of the children when she and Jerry divorced in 1969, and struggled to survive and write as a single mother. She worked as an editor for Players, a conscious Black gentleman's magazine, from 1972-1974, and in the mid 1970s, she moved to Hollywood, where she became an active participant in the spoken word and poetry communities, penning works for Studio Watts and becoming a fixture at Beyond Baroque in Venice. In 1977, she published a chapbook, Art in the Court of the Blue Fag, followed by a full-length collection of poems, Mad Dog Black Lady (1979) with Black Sparrow Press, beginning a publishing relationship that would last for over thirty years and produce twelve books in various genres. Her third child, Ian, with her second husband Stephen Grant, was born in 1978. Coleman was also an acclaimed performance artist known for her impactful readings. In the 1980s, her presence in the LA spoken word scene led her to collaborate with seminal punk figures such as Exene Cervenka (X) and Lydia Lunch, and she worked with New Alliance records to release a number of solo and split recordings. Coleman attended Valley Junior College and Cal State L.A., and went on to teach at UCLA extension, Cal State Long Beach, Naropa, and Loyola Marymount University, where she held the Fletcher Jones chair in literature and writing. Prolific across genres, Coleman wrote poetry , short stories, novels, nonfiction, and plays, as well as scripts for film and television, winning an Emmy for her work on on Days of Our Lives in 1976 and working as a featured columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Coleman is one of the most widely anthologized and published poets of her generation, appearing in prestigious collections such as Postmodern American Poetry : A Norton Anthology and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry . Her poetry collection Bathwater Wine received the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Mercurochrome: New Poems (2001) was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her honors include a Guggenheim, an NEA fellowship, and the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award. With her husband of thirty years, poet and visual artist Austin Straus, she hosted "The Poetry Connexion" on KPFK from 1981-1994. She died November 22, 2013. In November of 2015, the Ascot branch of the Los Angeles public library in Watts, where Coleman spent many of her formative years reading and writing, was renamed the Wanda Coleman Branch in her honor.

The collection chronicles Coleman's entire career (1960-2013), and includes many materials that provide insight into her process, such as meticulously kept records of submissions, publications, and rejections; multiple drafts and revisions of poems, stories, and articles with Coleman's edits; correspondence with John Martin at Black Sparrow Press regarding major works; a wealth of correspondence with major literary figures such as E. Ethelbert Miller and Sesshu Foster; many activist materials; flyers and other ephemera related to Coleman's public performances and other "gigs"; teaching materials; photographs; recordings; and many unpublished writings including a novel, a collection of newer short stories, and screenplays.

• Series 1: Correspondence, 1960-2013
• Series 2: Works by Wanda Coleman, 1961-2012
• Subseries 2.1: Poetry , 1968-2010
• Subseries 2.2: Fiction, 1975-2012
• Subseries 2.3: Nonfiction, 1973-2012
• Subseries 2.4: Spoken Word, TV, Film, and Theater, 1970-2011
• Subseries 2.5: Juvenilia and Visual Art, 1961-1998
• Series 3: Gigs/PR, 1969-2007
• Series 4: Memorabilia, 1963-2012

Collection is primarily ordered chronologically.

Digital reproductions of materials in Box 184 are available for viewing in the Library Special Collections reading room.

Black Sparrow Press records, UC Berkeley Bancroft Library (Collection BANC MSS 97/40 c). 

S.A. Griffin collection of underground poetry , Scott Wannberg, and the Carma Bums, circa 1950-2015, UCLA Special Collections (Collection 2248).  

John Martin Papers, 1966-1981(Collection 1267).  

Watts Writers' Workshop stories, lesson books, and other material (Collection 0177).